Site Background And Main Page Design

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 4:57 pm

Right, well Zephyr and I got into a small discussion about the design of the site background and main page. Zeph said that he would be interested to see my design, even if we couldn't impliment it, so here it is. Several members voiced the opinion that they liked the general look of the site as it is, so I made sure to keep things fairly similar. This is just basic really, alot more could be done with it of course. The design is of the main page only. The forums would stay the same, except the background would be parchmentish instead of plain tan. The page-topper would also be changed to the one in the design. I used my own logo because when I tried the official one it looked very out of place. That can always be changed. The regular interface and function of the site would stay the same. This is just an idea, nothing is decided yet, I would just like to hear the general concensus of everyone. Please tell me whether you like it or whether you'd like to see changes and whether you think it should be implimented or not. Again, this is just an idea.

(Be sure to have both this and the current main page open simaltaneously so you can compare the two.)

The design: [url]http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=12/36209371315.jpg&s=x12[/url]

Hope you like!

horodnicdragos · Post by **horodnicdragos** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:04 pm

I agree with Morgoth.It looks 100 times better.But what is the size of the pictures.Remember that for dial-up users will take a lot if the files are big.And foe the forums...I think we should change the buttons too.And good job with http://www.putfile.com/ I think we should host the atachaments there.TR servers can only keep the claims and other things like this.(OoT...Maps...)

Post by **Haplo** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:05 pm

Well it's a great design, for starters, but I think that there needs to be more color variation. The different shades are too similar. And I'd take away the Emboss affect or w/e that is on the title at the top. That's just my opinion though.

Lady Nerevar · Post by **Lady Nerevar** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:07 pm

-the side bar need to be a diferent color.
-the side bar needs to be the same width as the buttons
-the title looks kinda funky...
-not fond of the font (kinda clashes whith the general look of the site)
-hte logo is not the oficial one
-needs some color variation

um... thats all i can come up whith for now.

[edit]
-the border looks wierd too

horodnicdragos · Post by **horodnicdragos** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:09 pm

Lady N is somehow right.You didn't used the official logo.But I think Morgoth's logo looks better...That's what I think.And I don't really like taht perchement from the left of the screen.

Arthmodeus · Post by **Arthmodeus** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:10 pm

Except for the outdated logo, it looks brilliant.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:14 pm

Hey, I'm not trying to make this into another logo compition, but if you want, go into photoshop or paint and try the design with our official logo. You'll see what I mean. And yes, the side bar looks sort of weird, but I couldn't find a nice scroll. Any help?

horodnicdragos · Post by **horodnicdragos** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:18 pm

Try change the colour of the scroll in photoshop.So that it will snap nice with teh background.

fanfas · Post by **fanfas** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:19 pm

Looks very nice, but i also agree that it needs more different colors at least one or two more, the green and blue in the pic of the current page makes it look nicer.

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:31 pm

For the titles at least, you should use "Magic Cards" as the font.

That's what the current web design does, using small caps.
[img]http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/g/logo_top.png[/img]
Try without small caps, though. And Rebuilt rather than rebuilT.

Also use the Magic Cards font for the navigation bar on the left (people who don't have that font will see a standard font, but for those who have it, it'll look better). The Magic Cards font is found on the Morrowind TESCS CD, in Data Files\BookArt.

Use the official logo, without modifying it.

Don't add typos! ("Veiw intro"...)

For the "Random Screenshot" section, maybe put six screenshots on two columns.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 5:59 pm

Sorry, but the magic cards font looks cartoonish and unprofesional in my opinion. I refuse to use it.

Plus, I don't have it in my font library anyhow...

Zephyr · Post by **Zephyr** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:00 pm

I think I would rather replace the space that the logo occupies with some very very detailed concept art that reflects our current goal, Hammerfell. It's already rather obvious which site the user is on, considering that tamriel rebuilt is not only in the site address, but also in the page title at the top. More symbols with "tamriel rebuilt" on it would serve little purpose.

Another thing, which would worry me most, is the tiling of background images you're using in the concept. They absolutely have to tile and the whole front page has to scale properly. In terms of your art, this means (as I'm sure you know) that a lot of shading will be undoable without some trickery with transculent pictures.

Post by **Haplo** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:11 pm

And I don't know if you realized, but flipping the seperating bar (inbetween the intro text and the news) doesn't work, because if you look closely, you see the body of a chinese-type dragon, with a head at each end. The way you inverted the direction causes them to be upside down.

Kind of odd that way

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:15 pm

I do not like it. I think that it is flashy, unnatural, and just not good looking. The only improvement I can see is that the stupid side banner is gone.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:31 pm

Zeph: I know that, but worry not, I saved every bit on a seperate layer, so I can give the pieces to you seperatly if need be. Also, I'm in the process of changing that side part with the catagories on it, so I'll update this soon.

Sload: I think it is just right as far as flashy goes. It retains the original look somewhat, while making the design more solid and less... weak? The front page is bland. We need a page that reflects our image. TR is anything but bland. Similarly, Oblivion is flashy. Flashy graphics, flashy gameplay, everything. If we are to use the Oblivion engine, we need a competant look.

Inferno_str1ke · Post by **Inferno_str1ke** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:33 pm

I like it, just change the width of the sidebar (looks a bit wide) and it'll be great. And as Sload said, getting rid of the odd right banner is a big bonus.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:45 pm

The frontpage as it is looks fine, except for the side banner. You're right. It's bland. It's good that way. I don't think that flashiness looks good.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:49 pm

Sload wrote:The frontpage as it is looks fine, except for the side banner. You're right. It's bland. It's good that way. I don't think that flashiness looks good.

I know what you mean, but what is a newb who has seen much better site designs going to think at first glance. Bland site = bland mod. Plus it looks unprofesional as of now.

Post by **Haplo** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:20 pm

We don't need to worry about impressing newbs who base the content of TR and the quality of our mod on their very first impression of our main page. If they really don't know about us yet, then I doubt they know of other, lesser-publicized mods.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:23 pm

I don't think it looks unproffessional. I think it looks, no offense, far more proffessional than what you showed.

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:38 pm

Morgoth wrote:Sorry, but the magic cards font looks cartoonish and unprofesional in my opinion. I refuse to use it. Plus, I don't have it in my font library anyhow...

Allow me to put some emphasis...

Gez wrote:For the titles at least, you should use "Magic Cards" as the font.
That's what the current web design does, using small caps.
[img]http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/g/logo_top.png[/img]
Try without small caps, though. And Rebuilt rather than rebuilT.

That's for the "cartoony"... And for the "I don't have it":

Gez wrote:Also use the Magic Cards font for the navigation bar on the left (people who don't have that font will see a standard font, but for those who have it, it'll look better). The Magic Cards font is found on the Morrowind TESCS CD, in Data Files\BookArt.

Zephyr · Post by **Zephyr** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:40 pm

Yeah well professionalism in this case is so subjective that it's hard to argue about in one direction or other. Of course, I think that my site is rather professional, save for the sidebar picture which I agree to be completely useless. There's a story for it though. I didn't originally want it, but because there were many arguments about how the website should look like back two years ago, I had to put the sidebar pic there because the core at that time thought we should have something flashy there.

I had to draw it myself, and me being no artist, I never thought it went really well.

As for the main title text (in magic cards font), I struggled with drawing a stylized text myself but nothing ever came out of it so I ended up using the font from Morrowind.

I'm mostly concerned in general about how to make the site such that it could be used not only for advertising but also as a resource for TR members as well. I have some ideas for this and none of them include making the site look any better than it is. I prefer simplicity myself, to an extent that some people may not enjoy the final result.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:45 pm

Zephyr: Actually, that sidebar was half the reason I designed a new version. The other half-reason was that people were complaining about the site design as of now. I absolutly hate the Cards font. The background is blurry and almost a solid color besides the tiny little map at the bottom. There needs to be more style to it. Otherwise it is profesional, yes. If you changed those things, it would be perfect, but then again, if you changed those things, you'd end up with my design...

Edit: I like the scroll you used alot, if you can give me a file of it, I will use it.

Edit again: Oh, and thanks for the info on that design dragon thing, Haplo. I've flipped it.

The Old Ye Bard · Post by **The Old Ye Bard** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:01 pm

looks TESIV-ish, not TESIII.
maybe it would be cool if it was applyed when/if we move to the new engine.

Dexter · Post by **Dexter** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:23 pm

Well, one thing I like about your design is the logo is in the body of the page, and not the "header". However, Zephyr had a very interesting idea with putting a detailed Hammerfell design there instead. If we do make a main page update, I can do the art for it.
Another thing I like about your design is that it is more unified than ours is. One thing that I think really throws ours off is the landscape strip on the right. It is too Canterbury Tales-ish for my taste, and unless you are at the bottom of the page, it just looks like a blue bar.

Eraser · Post by **Eraser** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:02 am

I do like the look of it, it does look more tes4-ish in some way.

The emboss looks alright, just change the shadow direction to be below the letters instead of on the top of them.

Orix · Post by **Orix** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:25 am

Not a bad start. I'd recommend getting rid of the nasty plastic effect on the logo, looks rutten awful. Make the borders the same size... or alternatively remove it, remove the emboss effect on the letters, and shadow effect on the title, and maybe make the colours more similar to each other, the contrast between the gold and beige stands out.

Keep up the good work!

Inferno_str1ke · Post by **Inferno_str1ke** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 1:45 am

I guess for now, Zephyr should remove the crap right sidebar, which we have all agreed we hate, and maybe widen the left sidebar a tad, because it looks bad when the links have words split over two or even three lines. With that done the new design doesn't have much over the old, and just comes down to taste with the styling of various things.

Zephyr · Post by **Zephyr** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 2:01 am

Inferno: I agree completely. In fact, since I've already stated that I will probably not be doing much updating anyway because of other concerns, removing the sidebar is pretty much all I could bother doing, because removing it shouldn't take too long.

Morgoth: I don't mind at all if you keep going on making a new design though, even if it's not going to be implemented.

The background is blurry and almost a solid color besides the tiny little map at the bottom.

I don't get the blurry part. The site's background is solid color. I would prefer to keep it that way to make reading the text as easy as possible.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 2:17 am

The tiny little map at the bottom has always bugged me. It's a mirrored map of Morrowind. It doesn't make any sense.

Inferno_str1ke · Post by **Inferno_str1ke** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 9:57 am

It does looks kind of odd that theres a blank background the whole way down, then this picture of the half of Tamriel that we've not gotten to yet squeezed at the bottom. Would be better if it was the blank coloured background the whole way.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 3:57 pm

Okay, changed things up a bit and got this as a result.

[url=http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=12/36309513793.jpg&s=x11][img]http://x11.putfile.com/12/36309513793-thumb.jpg[/img][/url]

Tried to fix most of the things people were telling me about. I think it looks much better than the original one I did, but that's just me. Also, I tried that idea with the Hammerfell concept art. (The art is El Scumbago's) and it turned out nicely. Please tell me what you all think of the new design.

Zephyr · Post by **Zephyr** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 4:42 pm

It's indeed much better now, but I still don't like the title text.

Another problem with shaded background just came to mind: when this is done, there will be problems with all the current concept art, because it's shaded with the current exact color so that the art would look like it's merged to the page. To change the color or give the background a texture would ruin this effect.

As for the mirrored map, it indeed looks weird, but because of some technical reasons (background colors of the parchament edges wouldn't match due to the size of the image), it was the only way a map could be fit there. Since we were making Morrowind at the time (and still are), it made sense to have that map there, even if mirrored.

Tags · Post by **Tags** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:25 pm

just a thougth but if Morgoth realy wants to re-do the page.... couldn he not simply take it on upon himself to re-color the concet art to match his background...

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:09 pm

Actually, I'd be obliged to do just that. That is, if Zephyr doesn't want to. Like I said, nothing here is final or official... Just an idea.

Inferno_str1ke · Post by **Inferno_str1ke** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:19 pm

And new concept art is made as .png or .psd anyway, so it would be no more work in future for new stuff. If Morgoth can redo the old stuff then it makes sense to move to the new design.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 9:59 pm

I really wouldn't mind at all. This would also give Zeph more time to do more important things on the site. Alot of work will be needed to switch to the new Tes4 forums and get them ready for modding, so editing the art would be one less thing he has to worry about. I have the background pattern saved as a fill, so I'm ready to go. Should there be a poll on the new design?

Zephyr · Post by **Zephyr** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:06 pm

I have now removed the vignette sidebar from the main site. I also made a couple of other updates which are not very noticeable though. The other changes were changing a couple of icon graphics because it seemed that people have had trouble noticing some stuff. Another change was removing the claim owner's ability to edit the claim description, because people had a tendency to remove the original descriptions and replace them with their own, making it difficult to keep track of stuff.

The thing with the main website is, Morgoth, that most of it is html embedded with PHP and done in a time when I didn't master the language very well, so it's a mess (the forum mods I've made are much better in this sense, trust me). To make the website design as well as implement it, you'd have to know php as well as html in order to save any of my time, otherwise I'd end up making all the changes anyway and just create more work for me. As I've repeatedly said, I'll be leaving in Februrary for a few months so any sorts of big changes are completely undoable in this timeframe as I still happen to have exams in the end of January.

Morgoth · Post by **Morgoth** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 5:11 pm

Well, we are definatly going to need site updates in the coming months, especially since Oblivion will be on our doorstep by then. There must be someone that knows the language who can take over for awhile when you leave. And really, it isn't hard at all to change a background and page header. The rest of the stuff can wait til you get back. I could even do those changes in a relatively short time, and I'm almost html illiterate...